Talking about my great-grandparents and how they married


Chapter 2… The García girls’ wedding


City streets Leon City. Leon, Nicaragua
City streets
Leon City. Leon, Nicaragua

He was the third of five brothers, and she was the third of five sisters. At the time, the main church of Chinandega, the beautiful parish of Our Lady of Santa Ana was going through repairs. Sadly, the church had sustained heavy damage during the main earthquake of 1925. For that reason, they married at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, in El Viejo, a small town near Chinandega. They were my grandfather Jairo’s parents. That was my great-grandparent’s wedding (though some of the cynics called it an alliance).

My great-grandfather’s name was Leobardo Salvador Díaz Alvarez. His family was originally from Chinandega, where he was better known as don Leobardo. Together with his brothers, they owned sugar cane and peanut plantations, and two small sugar mills in the small town of Chichigalpa. My great-grandmother was doña Eduviges Leónora Garcia y Hernandez. Her family was from the port of Corinto (the main port on the Nicaraguan Pacific), a half hour drive from Chinandega. There everybody simply knew her as doña Leónor. Even though the Garcia family was originally from Corinto, at the time, they were living in León. Their father owned huge cotton plantations close by and was successfully exporting the cotton to the markets in the United States. At the time, Nicaragua was considered as the cotton capital of Central America. People say the American dollars were so plentiful, that in the mornings, the women swept them off the streets with the rest of the rubbish. There are those who still think of these times as “the good old days”. When both families joined in matrimony, their fortunes were also tied together.


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